From hosting a local coven of dancing witches to putting on an annual gecko-themed festival, Gulfport has a proud reputation for welcoming in the weird.
So where do roaming peacocks fit in?
In recent years, a small but sometimes shrieking flock of peafowl have made Gulfport their home. They parade down Beach Boulevard at dusk and show off their brilliant plumage by the senior center and library.
While the peacocks aren’t new in town, the recent growth of the local flock prompted a concerned resident to pipe up during the public comment portion of the city’s April 21 meeting.
“They wake us up at five o’clock in the morning,” Berkeley Grimball said. “They can jump on top of your cars. They tear up your garden. If they land on your pool screen, they will completely destroy it. And additionally, they just really have bad personalities.”
What followed included social media debates, a flurry of local news stories about the birds and a line of “Hell no, we won’t go!” peacock T-shirts from a local guide company.
“We’re very polarized human beings, these days in particular, and even when it comes to peacocks,” Vice Mayor Marlene Shaw said. “Honestly, as soon as that person spoke at council, I thought, ‘OK, next there’s going to be a save the peacock movement.’”
Naturally, there were even more comments at the next council meeting on May 5. Gulfport resident Brad Bruner waited 2½ hours to share his support for the peacocks.
“I thought they were uniquely beautiful and deeply connected to Gulfport,” he said. “We celebrate color, expression, the unexpected — and peacocks embody those values.”
Bruner used to visit Sacred Lands, a preserved Tocobaga site in St. Petersburg’s Jungle Prada neighborhood, to see peacocks in the wild. But about six months after he moved to Gulfport in 2022, he encountered a few birds on his street.
“It doesn’t surprise me that this whole conversation is happening now because this is the season when they’re the loudest,” he said. “Just like we have hurricane season, we also have peacock vocalization season that tends to be late February and early March into June. But they’re already less vocal than they were even a few weeks ago.”
He hopes that as the noisy mating season dies down, so will the complaints.
Gulfport’s official stance, according to cultural facilities events supervisor Justin Shea, is brief.
“From the administrative side of government, they’re birds. They live here, and that’s as far as I can go on it,” he said.
The city is one of several Tampa Bay areas where peafowl have made their homes.
The Jungle Prada flock has been traced back to the Rothman family, who founded Kane’s Furniture and ordered birds as pets decades ago. In Disston Heights, residents speculate that the birds originated from a local veterinarian or an aviary that belonged to Sunken Gardens owner George Turner.
In Tampa, a large flock flits around Wellswood and sometimes Seminole Heights; it may have originated from a doctor who left his peacocks behind after moving. Dunedin’s peafowl may stretch back to the 1920s, when a local farm was founded to source “fashionable tail feathers.”
No one is sure where exactly Gulfport’s birds came from, although residents have their guesses.
Some wondered if they were pets left behind. Or perhaps the birds were blown into town from Jungle Prada after a bad storm or territory issues.
“Any kind of big event like that’s going to cause some disruption,” said resident Amanda Hagood. “If there were a ton of trees down, or some of their habitat got messed up, that might cause them to go and seek other places.”
Hagood, a visiting assistant professor of animal studies at Eckerd College, loves starting her day with the peacocks. On early-morning walks, she wakes up to them plodding across the grass. She stops to let them cross the road as she takes her son to school. She especially adores the huge male that likes to sit on her neighbor’s pine tree.
“It just never fails to wow me,” she said. “It’s just like an iridescent waterfall spilling down the tree branches.”
While peacocks are native to Southeast Asia, not Florida, Hagood said they do not fit the classical definition of invasive, which is to say they don’t cause significant ecological harm. Indeed, there are benefits to having them around. The birds have a taste for snacking on bugs, including the detested Eastern Lubber grasshopper.
“I’ve seen them take them on and eat them like they’re (an) amuse-bouche,” Bruner said.
Peafowl have also been used on farms. Thanks to their distinctive call and penchant for recognizing faces, Hagood said the birds make “really, really good alarms.”
“They’re really not that different from chickens. They’re just bigger,” she said. “I think they actually are doing a pretty good job of figuring out how to navigate the streets and stay out of the way of cars. ... Better than some people, honestly.”
In communities where populations are larger, peacocks have been known to cause trouble. Males can peck at cars if they see their own reflection and believe it’s competition for a mate. And mama birds are quick to defend their babies.
But the Gulfport flock is still pretty small — around two dozen or so birds, Shaw said. It takes a chick three years to mature if it can survive environmental threats, including traffic, storms and predators.
There are natural, humane ways to steer peacocks away from your property, Shaw said. Automatic sprinklers, barking dogs and red pepper flakes can be deterrents. For those worried about birds leaping onto cars and scratching the paint, hanging something above your vehicle, like a sun shade, can help.
“They’re attracted to reflective surfaces, so that’s one of the reasons they go to windows or cars,” she said. “Covering your car is a good idea, especially if you’re worried about some scratching it.”
If a peacock has a taste for plants in your garden, hanging up a small flashing mirror on a string can keep them away.
Above all, respect the birds from a distance — without bothering them or offering food.
“There’s a reason they’re a symbol of protection in so many cultures. They say the eyes on the tail feathers ward away the evil eye,” Bruner said. “I think that if we leave them alone ... their populations will stabilize and they will benefit us.”
Information from the Times archives was used in this article.
